A motor would be cool, but that would complicate your project greatly.  But if your wheels are good enough, then a cast or crew member should be able to just stand to the side of the turntable and push it around with one foot.   The one place to invest a little budget is on good wheels.  Good wheels last 20 years, so you can make a case for this being "a good investment in our theatre program".   Don't waste money on weak and noisy casters from Lowe's or Home Depot...you'll just end up trashing them after one or two shows.   Find a local industrial "material handling company" and purchase some heavy-duty casters that have ball bearings in the axles.  (Remember, for a turntable you don't want "swival casters", by the way, but "fixed" wheels).

 

Sounds fun. Good luck with it!  -Dana

 

 

Or if you do a search on this site, there are other topics on turntables ect.

Good bearing castors are important & it's worth while to spend the extra. Check the castor for side to side ways slop on the wheel, as nost cheapies have only a bolt & sleave as a bearing.

I prefer revolves to be made in cheesecake of 4:8 segments, for easy storage. Also with the size required, it maybe easier to produce it by using standard available sheet size of boards off the shelf, for the deck.

The segmented revolve will help, if you need to regularly 'bump  in/out' the set piece/performance at your cafetorium.

However dependant upon the deck size of the revovle, this may govern the chioce of method required.

Anchoring the central spigot would be the problem, as Dana suggested, although you could skin your floor stage space with MDF boards, which are cheap enough, especialy if you can salvage them from a local building site. They normally use them as a work cover to protect the finish on flooring during the build, then dump them after thier are finished.

Building site 'Skip diving' would be a great day out for your stundents! You could do it under the heading of a recycling excursion tutorial?

It is amasing what is chucked as landfill at the local rubbish dump!

Using the MDF it is easy enough to under gaffer tape boards together, as they do with 'Tarquet' dance mats.

MDF being easy to cut you can fit it snuggly between walls to stablise & reduce the revolves waltzing. Also to anchor the central spigot or with the [fixed] castors of the turntable to the stage floor MDF skin.